Log: Business

[halsten]

The weather is so downright temperate this afternoon that shortly after lunch, the market is crowded. There's a bit more business going on than usual, but no small number of the people about seem to be those from points north, come south for a respite from the winter. They're doing a better job at looking than buying, so though Hal has his eye on the couple who are poking through an assortment of vases sitting out on his front counter, he seems to have given up any effort to close that particular deal. He's sitting a bit back, with a cigarette held in his mouth as his fingers go through the process of counting marks out of a lockbox.

Today, when Loe comes to the market, it's not to check in on the vendors or to do a little shopping. Today, she's selling. At the moment, she's hooked a young bluerider who came by to flirt with that girl selling woven blankets, using the angle that she might be receptive if he had a fancy place to invite her to, if he won the cottage raffle. He hands over the marks and she jots his name down and hands over a ticket. The bluerider goes back to his wooing, leaving Loe to turn towards a certain familiar booth with ever-changing wares. Since Halsten is busy with his lockbox, and trying to keep an eye on the couple who don't seem to be buying, he might not notice when Loe takes a lean against the booth's post--shoulder against it, hip set at an angle--to watch with a little curve at the corner of her mouth.

"See anything you like?" Hal calls over to the pair again, pausing only long enough to move the cigarette to ask properly, but he gets back only an annoyed-sounding protest that they're just looking, thanks. He finishes his count up soon enough, quick fingers working the ways of long practice, and the box is locked again, keys slipped back into his pocket, the box put under the counter. Then it's back to smoking in earnest, surveying the crowd, somehow managing to miss Loe lurking there until the last possible moment. "Hey, there. How long've you been standing there? Gave me a fright."

"Yes, you look terrified," Loe remarks with a smile, slinking off the post to to have her weight on her feet again, to wander on into the booth beside him. "How's business?" she wonders, a brow lifted toward the just-looking couple, whether they're still here just looking or in the process of moving on. It's possible, from the way she slips her gaze sideways to eye the trader, that her question doesn't refer only to the business of this particular booth but of his life in general. And her fingers go out, silently asking for his cigarette.

The unspoken request gets a wary look in response, but Halsten goes so far as to hand it over. It's not like he doesn't have plenty more where that came from, after all. "Business is good." He keeps glancing over at the browsers, who do seem to finally be moving on, with a discussion about where they're headed next. This inspires a look more of relief than anxiety over a lost sale. At least they haven't stolen anything. Hopefully. "Really good. Keeping me busy. You know. Ah--you? How're you?"

Her fingers toy with the slim roll of tobacco and paper, idle eyes slipping down to watch until it settles comfortably between her fingertips and she lifts it to her lips. The puff she takes is so tiny, there's hardly a thing to escape on her exhale. She pays that no mind. The next drag, while still dainy, actually produces a little smoke. "It's the dry season. Really, it's a perfect time to unveil the cottages. When the rest of the world starts to get cold and disgusting and here... it's beautiful. Perfect." Somewhere in the midst of that, her eyes shift from the crowd at the market to the sky above, all blue and breezy. She puts the cigarette to her lips again and smiles sideways to Hal, just a hint of shyness there. "I'm better. Thank you."

Just that she's actually making use of the offering, improbably, gets a big smile out of Hal. Which pleasure is clearly the reason he's now paying so much more attention to her hands and her mouth than to his front counter, for the moment; for all he's aware, miscreants could have probably made off with the whole inventory. "Better. Good," brushed over quickly so as to not lend overmuch time to the thought of what she might be better than. "It is indeed excellent timing. And it has been... gorgeous. When do they actually open?"

Loe lets another tiny wisp of smoke leaver her lips and then she offers the cigarette back to him. Perhaps she misunderstood the nature of that rapt look he was giving her. "I'm selling raffle tickets. For the opening. Well, pre-opening. A chance to win three nights in one of the cottages. I figure it's a chance to get a headstart on recouping our losses from building, iron out the process of renting and turnover, get feedback on what else we might need to do." She does have her clipboard with her, and now she lifts it to show the stack of tickets held in its grasp. "Want one?" she asks with a bright, wry grin.

It's accepted in any case. Halsten takes a long pull, breathes it out slowly--and then offers it back again. How very generous. He nods along with the explanation. Actually seeming to pay attention, even. "Generates some interest, too, I'll imagine. Those who don't win will already have their heads full of the idea." Faint smile. "Three nights. Downright indulgent. But probably not a place one would go to be alone. I'm pretty sure I'd be bored. How much are the tickets?"

Back again. Loe takes the cigarette, but goes about twiddling it in her fingers, ashing only inadvertantly, rather than taking a drag right away. "Precisely. And we have our first booking. It's a few months out but... it's there." Only after that does she take another puff, another tiny baby puff, almost a waste, really. "There's no reason you couldn't invite someone along. If you won. If you bought a ticket. And, actually, I throw in a free one if you buy ten. You could sell the ten and keep the spare," she suggests with a tip of her blonde head toward the front table.

"I have a bad history with invitations," Hal says, just an offhand comment. The tip of her head finally moves his attention back to the crowd, although his distraction has not done much to attract attention to his wares, and he seems to feel no urgent need to go beckoning people in the booth's direction. "So, one is free if I buy the other ten. How much are the other ten, then?"

"Am I supposed to believe you spend your nights alone?" Loe asks with a smirk. She might smile, but there's something in her eyes that says remembers the last time he extended an invitation to her, that sliver of something shy. She passes the cigarette back and turns to look over what he has decorating this booth today. "It's a sixteenth for a ticket. They seem to move pretty easily. I doubt you'd have to work to get rid of them. And, if you weren't interested in keeping the spare, you could sell that too, make a profit, albeit a small one." She lifts and drops a bare shoulder.

It's the usual sort of assortment, although there's quite a lot of assorted painted pottery items. Probably all of the same provenance. "It happens more than you'd think. A sixteenth, huh. How many do you have on you? Got enough to sell me eighty? Pretty sure I can move eighty." The cigarette is back in Hal's mouth again as he needs both hands to pull that lockbox back out, open it up. "Especially with this sort of traffic, next few days," muttered around it before he gets a hand free again. "Save you the time, at any rate."

That number comes as a surprise to Loe, who blinks at him and turns her attention to her clipboard, flipping through to check the numbers on the first and last ticket in the stack. "I have... twenty six here." But she does slip them all out from the clipboard, tucking that under her arm so she can shuffle through the tickets to properly count them. "If you could get names from people, so we can find them if they win... Do you want all twenty six or just the twenty and two free ones?"

"Whatever you've got. So that's one and five-eighths, yeah? No, one and a half, since two of those should be giveaways." Hal's counting it out as he goes--two halves and four eighths, he seems to be rather heavier on the small change today. His eyes then go to her counting process, as though he's going to check her count just as she's shuffling through the tickets. "Give you a little time to relax this way, hmm? Or at least attend to whatever other important things you have to be attending to."

"For all of them, one and a half," Loe confirms, moving over toward the table, shifting a piece of pottery out of the way to make some space. She starts to mark the backs of the tickets, some strange little notation that means something to her, if no one else. "This isn't some sort of favor, is it? You don't have to sell them... for me." Which might not be the sort of thing a person would say if marks were the only important thing in the equation. "Tell me you're doing it for the free tickets. Or the eighth. If you do move them all, I can get more for you." They are, indeed, handmade little tickets. Just a slip of paper with the weyr's crest stamped in rusty orange and the tickets number, both in numerals and written-out, done in Loe's own hand.

"I'm doing it for the free tickets," the obedient reply with a wry smile to follow. And then, "Or the eighth. Or because it'll draw people over to look at other things, get them into the aspirational sort of mood of which I can take advantage. It is under no circumstances to help you." Halsten at least manages to make part of that sound believeable. He watches over her shoulder as she marks the tickets. "Fewer tickets is, of course, far better odds for me, if I keep those two." The cigarette, finished or close enough so, is discarded and scuffed out on the ground. At least somebody seems to sweep up enough to keep the ground here from being disgusting. In the midst of a bright and temperate afternoon and a very busy market, Hal and Loe are in his booth, and he's paying very little attention to potential customers.

Indra loves busy market days. The throng, the thrill, the press of people all around. Maybe she's been here earlier and found it was warming up to be busy, or maybe it's just the weather, but she's got out a one-piece sarong instead of her weyrlingmaster clothes and traipses through the crowd of shoppers and traders and goods with an almost glossy-eyed giddiness. She stops at a booth kitty-corner from Hal's, where a bracelet has caught her eye, but there are several other people shopping here too and the trader cannot give her his instant, complete attention. In a few minutes this proves too little satisfaction to spend money on, and the weyrlingmaster turns on a heeled heel to find new distraction. She is tall, and in a moment of thin crowd she spies Hal, and prowls over toward his booth - only to find Loe there, too. She makes herself look happy anyway, and leans against the counter, waiting for the best possible chance to wriggle a wave of fingers at either man or woman. Waiting for attention. Indra hates busy market days.

Loe is, indeed, bent over her clipboard and a stack of raffle tickets she's marking off for Halsten. When he peers over her shoulder, she turns to glance at him. "Yes, that is how raffle odds work," she says dryly, though there's a smirk there, perhaps just because he's watching like he is. The ticket she turns over next is number sixty-five, giving him an idea of just how many have been sold. She doesn't look up again when a sarong is suddenly across the table from her, she just excuses herself. "Nevermind me. Just selling raffle tickets. Sixteenth a piece if you want a chance to win three nights in one of our new cottages." Of course, she'd skip that part if she knew her was standing there, but she doesn't. She's busy writing.

Peering over Loe's shoulder as he is, Halsten doesn't see Indra until she's doing the hand-waving thing. That's enough to get his attention, even if the sarong isn't. "You're out of stock," he reminds Loe first with a smug look to match her smirk, but then it's all wide smiles for Indra. "Sorry about that, a bit of side business. Long time, no see," to Indra. Walking a certain line between familiar and overly so. "Out for a bit of shopping? Anything in particular you're looking for? I've got some very nice pottery." Painted stuff, sitting generally on the table where the Headwoman is doing her writing.

Alas, asymmetrical cleavage and bared golden thighs and nothing to show for it but Loe's super-efficient sales pitch and Hal's wide smile. Well - the smile, at least, Indra likes that. She angles herself with hip against counter and one arm across her middle, one shoulder forward and the other back, chin up. "Pottery? From where? How made?" And her sparkling green regard is all for Hal - except for the little flicker toward Loe, a twist of smile suspecting she's just given herself away. "And tell me about this side business? Seemed to me this was a hard game to get into."

"Mm, but you aren't," Loe reminds Halsten of his ticket inventory, tossing a playfully wicked grin back at him. She still doesn't actually look at his latest customer, but surely that glance up from her work gives her the general impression that a tall woman is standing there. She goes right back to the tickets, though, the last one, number seventy. As she straightens with the stack of ready slips in hand, Indra speaks, and so Loe finally looks at her. It's one of those moments where the friendly drains, leaving the headwoman's expression cool. She says nothing, but turns to hand the stack to Halsten. "I'll just mark you down on my sheet and get out of your way. Let you get back to work." There's a smile for Hal. No smile for Indra.

"Most recently from one of the seaholds." While they're all meaningful looks, Halsten is picking up a vase and turning it over in his hands before offering it to Indra. "Solid stuff. Seventy-five, a hundred years old, probably. Series of estates. Ista's Lady Holder way, way back picked herself up a hobby. Fellow down at one of the seaholds was collecting it. No kids, nephews, nieces, whatever--" A look, suddenly, to Loe. "You're not in the way by any means," he protests, despite the fact that he's in the middle of a sale. Well, sort of, anyway. Hopefully.

That's all right, if Loe won't smile at her. Indra has smile enough for them both, and brilliance in her gaze to boot. "Don't let me interrupt," she purrs, transfering her attention from the headwoman to the trader amidst the words so they might seem to be for Hal more than for Loe. Her hands, of course, are for Hal alone, or rather for the vase he's putting into them. "Probably," she murmurs through a twist of her mouth, enjoying his patter more than believing it, looking up from downcast lashes like she'd been inspecting the merchandise to inspect his face instead. "So was the hobby the fellow or the vases? Hello, headwoman." Without looking away from Hal, but /he/ changed /his/ focus so this follows, of course. "Does he sell tickets, too?"

Rather than stand there in the middle of this sales pitch, with Indra right there and all, Loe takes up her clipboard to move back in the booth, toward the chair that Halsten normally lounges around in while he's waiting for something to happen. "Weyrlingmaster," she says with a nod before she takes her seat, his seat, the seat, whatever. She crosses her legs, the higher knee a better platform for the clipboard to rest on while she starts making notes about the tickets she's just handed off. And sure, maybe she glances up from time to time. And she's likely eavesdropping. And she probably finished writing Hal's name next to a few numbers already and is not just doodling. But either way, she leaves the trader to answer Indra about what he's selling.

There are a few glances back at Loe--she is, after all, sitting in Hal's chair--but it seems a little easier for the moment to focus on the task at hand. Or the vase at hand, as the case may be. "The pottery was the hobby. Well, far as I know it could have been the fellow, too. Peculiar thing to collect. But here I am with it. And the painting on some of them is quite, ah, attractive." The patter started slightly more smoothly than it ends up. "I do, in fact, have a few raffle tickets myself. Intended more as advertising, you understand. To lure folks over to have a look around. You don't seem to need luring."

"Ah, attractive?" Indra's eyes linger on Loe as she seats herself, taking in the cross of knee and the tilt of clipboard, surely an interest only in those coveted tickets, those tantalizing chances at a week in lazy paradise. But as she repeats the stammered part of Hal's description she pulls her gaze back up to him, her mouth quirking in a corner and creating one of those brackets that she'd rather not show, but perhaps doesn't know is showing, just in front of her cheek. Even so, she looks more wickedly bemused than past her expiration date, and arches a brow as if inviting more detail from him rather than looking at the vase herself. "Didn't you lure me already, Hal?" She takes the vase's weight in one hand and strokes it lengthily with the long fingers of the other, as if she might 'see' its ornamentation thus. "And promise me insights, too, I recall. Last I saw you, you were in no condition for philosophy, of course." She twists her shoulders, leaning sideways into the counter, toward him. "So I forgive you."

Loe has probably heard enough. And it seems she is, in fact, done with her notes. There's just one more thing that needs to happen before she leaves. Getting up from her chair, she approaches Halsten from behind, a hand laying on his shoulder as she comes to stand beside close him, as though whatever it is she has to say is rather a private thing. "Hey, one and a half," she reminds quietly, head tipped a little, presenting a cheek, indicating the direction of that lockbox he was dealing with a few moments ago. Her green eyes cut to Indra, but just momentarily and with no sign of apology for interrupting their reminiscing.

"Getting sick... changes one's priorities." Something exceptionally careful about the way Hal phrases that, as Loe approaches. He turns his attention to her as though the interruption is more than welcome. "Ah, right. One and a half." To Indra: "One second." It takes only a little longer than the promised second for him to open the box up to produce Loe's promised payment for the tickets, press it into her hand. "I shouldn't be working too late," in a slightly quieter voice, for the blonde. "I--thank you, for the tickets. I'll see you later, maybe?"

Indra's eyes follow as Loe presents that cheek, and though she does not lean back from the trader in any case, she is for the time of Hal's speech a distant observer, watching through lazy lashes. She might seem merely patient, letting the vase and her elbow both sink onto the countertop while she waits, but when has the weyrlingmaster ever been patient for attention? And why doesn't she watch the marks change hands? No: her half-lidded gaze, warm and nearly smoky, tracks their faces. She is attentive to a conversation to which she ought perhaps not be privy, or perhaps very much ought be.

Loe stays at his side when he turns away from Indra and heads over to the box, like proximity to Halsten somehow keeps the brownrider away, outside the momentarily private conversation. She also produces a little pouch, one that might -just- fit all the small denominations Hal has for her. She crams them in, barely gets the drawstring to close. Then, swift as can be, her hand reaches up to grab his neck, trying to pull him down for a quick, friendly kiss on his cheek. She'd do it without the grabbing, but he's just too damn tall for that, even with the wedge sandals she wears. And while he might have been looking for something more specific, her answer is just, "Yeah, I'll see you around." And as she turns to leave, there's finally a sweet smile for Indra. "Good luck with your shopping."

No hint of protest for the grabbing, but all Hal seems to be able to muster for Loe after that is a slightly bewildered expression and a, "Yeah, see you around." Not necessarily bewildered in an awful way, but enough so that the return of his attention to Indra is a bit haphazard. "So, ah. Right, then. Where were we? Pottery. I think." Not tickets and lures and philosophy. "Is that the sort of thing you have any interest in? Or I could--" Looking after Loe again, for no particular discernable reason. "--have a look around if there's anything else you need," he offers to Indra.

Still with the half-lidded staring, a very lazy voyeur watching a not-so-titillating kiss, Indra. But her mouth tweaks upward at its languid corners as the trader's released, and she puts down the other elbow on the counter so she can lean deeply and cradle her chin in one hand. "Thank you, headwoman," purrs the brownrider. "I'm sure I'll find something I like." And then she casts up her eyes at Hal, widening them for his benefit, and without so much as an acknowledgement of the vase that sits on the counter before her says, "You were telling me about the ah, attractive paintings on some of them. Are any of them ah," luxuriant, "exceptionally, ah," breathy, "interesting?"

Scattered as Hal is, it could've been way more titillating than that. Once Loe's well gone, he at least manages to get his bearings a bit better, but all that breathiness does not seem to be helping much in the process. "That depends on what you think of as interesting. Most of them are fairly abstract. Range of colors and patterns. She doesn't seem to have had any particular favorites." The easiest woman to focus on at this moment is long, long dead. "You're more than welcome to have a look at what I have."

Indra straightens without an iota of hurry, unbending her arms and turning one shoulder toward the trader, dropping her head to look down at the vase and letting a couple fingers stray over its rim before both hands are withdrawn to her sides and she's standing, in rare form, without leaning on anything but her own center of gravity. "I don't want to look, Hal," she purrs, with emphasis on 'want' that approaches petulance. "I want you to pick. I think that's our agreement, isn't it?" Apropos of nothing she turns her head, her gaze sweeping out into the crowd; but Loe, or whatever it is she's looking after, is lost to her vision's finding. So her eyes come back to Hal in their corners, green and brilliant beneath arching brows, her face still turned in profile. In an utterly different tone of voice, far quieter, for Hal alone like a schoolyard friend over lunches: "That seemed pointed."

"You said," not petulant at all, so very reasonable, "that you'd give me a chance to get to know what you like, first. But I don't know anything. Do you really want to leave your marks in the hands of my blind guessing?" Hal spreads his palms with the question. Reasonable, see? "You've met her, I take it. I don't think I've ever seen her that way, actually." Now he's looking in the direction the headwoman went, too, frowning for just a moment. But he turns back to the weyrlingmaster quickly. "But that's neither here nor there. Are you going to give me a little more to go on?"

"You're going to learn what I like by selling to me? Very businesslike of you." Indra says 'businesslike' as though it is an affront, though she is only teasing about being affronted, with the tip of her head and the slow drawing of her smile across her lips. "I thought I /was/ giving you more to go on, Hal. Pay attention." Less an order than a request, and again she spares a glance for the busy crowd of market-goers, as though Loe might appear at any moment and steal the brownrider's hard-won spotlight. She falsely attends then to the trader's booth, looking down and about at what he has on display, and begins strolling toward nothing in particular with hands adrift at her sides and hips, framed by those langorous hands, swaying. "If she's not normally like that, what do you suppose got into her?"

A deep breath. "You were coming on a bit strong," Halsten observes to Indra, with a small smile. "She might have gotten the wrong idea." Or the right one. Something. "It's automatic. The selling. Sorry. But, see, if you tell me some things you like, then I'm in a better position to figure out other things you might like, that have something in common with the things I know. I have been trying to pay attention, I just haven't had... much of an opportunity." The ending is a bit lame. It's not a very good excuse.

She is no longer interested in vases or merchandise, or at least if she is her interest is secondary; Indra turns around from a drifting, indifferent consideration of a sandalwood box and fixes Halsten in a decidedly unsultry, unpouting look. It isn't mean, certainly. Not angry. Just a little cool. "And here I thought you liked a little flirting. Or have you been in trouble with your committed partner and learned your lesson?" And Indra has exactly no impression that she's referring to Loe, if her arch mock-disappointment is any cue.

If she's going to have a look around, Halsten will just back off and let her do her looking at whatever he's got available, even as she's looking at him like that. "I didn't say I didn't." A pause. "Ah, that, no. That... didn't work out. In the long run. All for the best. And whatnot." He frowns, presses his lips together for a moment, runs his tongue over the inside of his lower lip thoughtfully. "Anyway. That I get that it's just flirting and not... an actual proposition doesn't mean that she would."

Ah, but she's not looking at the merchandise, now, unless Hal himself is merchandise. And perhaps he is, the way Indra tends to look at him when she's talking to him. "All for the best for you?" Her eyes are so sparkling that they could no longer be taken for merely flirtatious; these glints, like those off ice crystals, pierce. But only for a moment, and then the brownrider is closing the space of Hal's booth in long strides and lifting a hand toward the trader's shoulder to hang it there, and hang herself from it. "Pretty boy. Very little makes a man more appealing than unavailability; it can't hurt you to show me a little appreciation. Besides," and here she tips up her chin as if to look down upon him, though no matter how straight she stands he's still taller. "You're not a walking snotrag today."

He probably would not consider himself for sale, no. "For both of us," Halsten insists, if not very energetically. "I'm not very good at... commitment." There was another hand on his shoulder, earlier, but he pays slightly more notice to this one, especially with a whole brownrider hanging off of it. The pretty boy comment, of all thinks, actually makes him flush a bit. "Ah, no. I'm not... a walking snotrag, at present. I wasn't really the last time, either." Just falling down half-dead, like there's a difference. "The trouble--the trouble is that I don't sell what I get the impression you want."

Indra tips her head and looks him over like he is all new and shiny, and while he finds words (and finds some of them twice) she plucks up her other hand and with awfully long fingers traces the color in one cheek. "Well," she purrs, "aren't you the perceptive thing? And yet here I am, clearly trying to get something out of you." In goes her breath and up goes her cleavage, the space between squeezed thin by a little shift of her heels, click-click, toward him. "Or maybe I'm only trying to tell you what kinds of things I like, since you seemed to be having some trouble with that."

It might not be intentional, the way his head tilts into her fingers, just a tick. "Well, when you offer me money to buy things for you, I assume you want the sort of things that money buys. When you stand like that wearing something like that, I start to get the idea that unless I take a cue from the girls down at the Seven, this isn't a business transaction." Hal's voice at least stays more even, there. No weird pauses or repeated words. He seems to be rather carefully not touching her, though, proximity or not.

Indra's fingers trail over the place his blush had been until he's finished talking, her focus following the movement of her hand rather than that of his eyes or his mouth. But then she lifts her fingers in a careless wriggle of dismissal and lets them fall to his shoulder so he's framed in her languid grasp, and smiles her smoky smile up into his face. "One of them is. But it's funny business, finding out what a woman likes, wouldn't you say? And I'm sure you know what they say about business." Smoky turns amused, but to be clear, she amuses herself, no help from his hands-to-himself stoicism required.

"They," this proverbial they, "say a lot of things about business. Among other things, that it's an exceedingly bad idea to mix it with pleasure." Not that, despite Hal's failure to return her touchiness, he's made the slightest move to pull away, or even look away from her. And he's smiling, if still only a sliver of a smile. "And speaking of business, if I'm going to be open, I should be attending to mine. And I'm due to put a few more hours in, at least. Through the rest of the afternoon."

"And you don't want to jeopardize being free in case she deigns to come back to you." So Indra plucks herself off of him with a little wriggle of hips, stepping backward into a lean less slinky and more careless, one hand on hip and the other slung low by her thigh. Again, she is not angry, precisely, or even particularly put out; this time she could not even be called cool, because when she speaks she still purrs. "Maybe I could help you with that, Hal. Of course, I've already said so." So she turns around, because what she's said doesn't bear saying twice. But she does look over her shoulder and ask, mouth a sleek curve of wetted lips, "Did you notice?" With only her profile given, the trader could be forgiven for missing that the dip of her lashes is a wink, and after that, Indra takes his hint at last, and goes.

"She's not coming back." At least that's something considerably more believeable to say than to deny it entirely. "And I noticed. But that doesn't mean that's what I want." Her leaving, however, leaves him standing there without any direct objection, just blinking as she heads off for a moment before he can muster up a halfhearted wave after her. It's lame, but there's not much that could possibly be said there, is there? Then he's got work to be doing, or something along those lines.